While the recently concluded fall anime season featured more shoujo/romance titles than I expected, you can always count on the season to showcase titles that are steeped in serious themes. This is when anime programming doesn't shy away from depicting character mortality, suspense and violence.
Of the more serious and mature titles that premiered last fall, BTOOOM! was the first to conclude its run. Along with the still ongoing PSYCHO-PASS, BTOOOM! was one of the titles that featured a lot of grisly killings (albeit censored) and psychological torture for some of the characters. And no, the romance in the series doesn't do much to temper its seriousness.
Sakamoto Ryota is 22 years old, jobless, and still lives with his mother and stepfather. He spends all his time playing the video game BTOOOM!, a combat game that features teams trying to defeat each other using different types of bombs or BIMs. In the world of BTOOOM!, Ryota is a celebrated high-ranking player with an in-game wife named Himiko, a stark contrast to his real life, wherein his mother hounds him to get a job and he is unable to gain employment at Tyrannos Japan, the makers of BTOOOM!. One day, he leaves home to purchase food at a convenience store and is met by strange men. The next thing he knows, he is hanging from a parachute in the middle of a tropical island and his memory of recent events a blank. He also realizes that he is wearing a belt bag filled with what looks like a type of BIM from the game BTOOOM!. He wanders around the island and encounters another person, but before he can ask a question, the other man throws a bomb at him with the intention to kill. Ryota realizes that the bombs they are carrying are real and that they are intended to kill one another, much like in the video game that he plays.
What follows is a series of incidents and experiences that can cause any person to question whether it's better to just succumb to the demands of the game in order to survive or if there's still any merit to holding on to what little humanity you have left. After surviving his first encounter on the island, Ryota makes the decision not to play the game and instead find another way off the island, but those he come across with make it difficult not to fight for survival, requiring him to draw deeply time and again into his knowledge from his days of playing the video game. Even those that he would normally choose as allies would pose potential challenges, as every player on the island exhibits mistrust towards one another or could potentially have a hidden agenda for joining alliances.
Given that people are trying to kill each other constantly in the series, it's safe to say that trying to survive each day can be harrowing to Ryota, and his eventual companions Taira Kiyoshi and Himiko. But beyond the physical challenges of fighting your way through the dense jungle, which also features huge-ass komodo dragons, there are also psychological and emotional challenges that the participants have to contend with. Others might be more than willing to kill in order to get the required seven chips from those that they defeated in order to leave the island, but there are those like Ryota who acknowledge how much that kind of mentality can change them. The decision to kill is something that is bound to weigh heavily, even if it does mean staying alive. The constant fear and constantly weighing who you can trust is something that would eventually wear down even the most determined of people.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are moments that would lead to more positive realizations, as Ryota finds that there is more to him than the selfish NEET that he used to be. While he had the tendency to have doubts about himself and his companions time and again, he still proved to be a trusting (to a fault at times) human. He never hesitates to put himself in harm's way for the sake of others and is capable of more selflessness than he himself would have ever thought possible.
Surprisingly, there is romance in BTOOOM! as Ryota finds himself meeting Himiko, his in-game wife, on the island, although he is unaware of this fact in their first encounter, especially since that encounter is less on the romantic and more on the murderous front, courtesy of Himiko's fear of men after an attempt to rape her by another player. You feel a certain sense of impatience for Ryota and Himiko to realize that they actually do know each other, but I felt that things played out for the best for the couple, as they learned to trust one another gradually before any realization can take place, instead of just magically recognizing each other (which is impossible, since they only know each other's video game avatars). It makes their relationship less contrived and more grounded, despite how extraordinary their circumstances were.
BTOOOM! is animated very well. I'd say beautiful, but there are too many dead characters to make it that. The action sequences are exciting to watch and how the different battles played out were full of surprising twists, particularly in battles involving Ryota, who utilized the very instincts that made him a great BTOOOM! player online. The short twelve episode series that they adapted from the same titled manga packed quite a lot of events, enough to make you feel that you are watching a much longer series and that the participants on the island have been there for more than a mere few days. From the characters' present struggles in the anime to stories about their individual backgrounds that led to their stint on the island, there are very few lulls in the series when it came to story development.
No, BTOOOM! is definitely not your standard anime fare, especially when you factor in the mature themes of the series and its reflection on the human condition when faced with the challenges that the characters experienced on the island. BTOOOM! aims to intrigue and excite its audiences. And I know I felt both while watching the series. You just might, too.
Happy viewing!!Labels: Action, Adaptation, Anime, BTOOOM, Must-Watch, Romance, Sci-fi, TV
